Task 7

Question 1

Theory of Mind

Answer 1

Understanding other people as people who have desires, their own beliefs and interpretations of the world that can differ from our own.

Question 2

Mental representation

Answer 2

Persons set of beliefs about the world.

Question 3

False belief task

Answer 3

Test of understanding mental representations.

Children hear a story about a child putting chocolate into a blue box and then leaving the room the mother changes it to a green box. Then they’re asked to guess where the boy is going to look for the chocolate.

Four year olds will say that he will look into the green box proving that they not understand that:

Boys beliefs about the world are different from how the world really is.

Boy will act on basis of his beliefs and not the actual state of the world

Question 4

Sally Anne task

Answer 4

Simpler version of the false belief task with more salient features making it easier for children to succeed.

Children are presented with two dolls, Sally and Anne almost same procedure than false belief task.

4 year olds succeed while three year olds wouldn´t

Question 5

Smarties task

Answer 5

Children are shown a box of smarties with pencils within once all this is shown to them they are asked to wonder what another child may think there is inside

younger than for year olds replied ´pencils´

Young infants seem to be unable to have any insight into their own minds and aknowledge that before they were shown what was inside they thought they were smarties

Question 6

Distinguishing mental states in language with children of 2 and 3 years old

Answer 6

2: Children use internal words that refer to internal
states of perception or emotion such as I see or I want
3: Children use cognitive terms such as know think or remember.They can distinguish between menbtal states and external reality

Question 7

Understanding the relationship between seeing and knowing ages 2 3 and 4

Answer 7

2: Children understand relationship between seeing and knowing.
Demonstration/ They were asked to show a picture within a box to someone else and relaized that they needed to change the angle so that other person could see it.
3: Childre understand that different people can have different point of view of the same object.
Demonstration: A card with different drawings to each side is shown to the children one side towards them the other to another person then theyre asked to tell what the other person is seeing
4: Children realize that people may have different views of object that is equally visible to both.
Demonstration: Childs were shown a picture of a turtle flat on the bale while the experimenter sat in front of them when asked if the experimenter saw it upwards or backwards it wasn´ùt till age 4 that they did notice.

Question 8

Children have difficulties in tasks that involve distinguishing appearance and reality. Ages 3 and 4

Answer 8

Demonstration: They were shown a sponge that from afar looked like a rock once they approached to it they were allowed to feel it within their own hands. They were asked how does it look like? and what is it really?

3: They answered both a sponge they cant understand that there´s different interpretations for an object.
also dont realize that appearance of an boject is a representation that can be changed.

4: They realize there could be multiple representations of an object but that only one is correct, thus, understanding that people can have true and false beliefs

Question 9

Predicting behavior ages 2 and 3

Answer 9

2: They understand that poeple have desires and that this may influence the way they act.
Demonstration/ Sam wants to find a rabbit that is in ether one whole or another then sam looks into one hole and children are asked whether they think sam will look into the other hol eor not they answered he wouldnt if finds the rabbit and he would if he doesnt

3: Children undesrtand that peiple have their own beliefs about the world in addition to desires

Demonstration: Children were shown a shelf and a box with books, the character in question is looking for books and doesnt know there are some in the toy box. kids are asked where she is going to look

Though they still dont understand that people may act in innacurate beliefs

Question 10

When is the Theory of Mind achieved?

Answer 10

Children above 4 years old pass the fals ebelief tasks whil eyounger than that still struggle.

Question 11

Differences between from age 4 and before age 4.

Answer 11

From age 4 : Children understand false belief and that other people behaviors may be based on incorrect assumptions about the world.
Before age 4: Children (3 specially) may have some understanding of belief but are unaware of their own understanding.

At age three when confronted with the boxes and chocolate case they still although failing linger their look s a little longer on the box boy would have reallly looked at compared with 2 years olds.

Question 12

Theory of mind after 4 years of age

Answer 12

After undesrtanding that behavior is based on representations of the world children realize also that emotional reponses are also based on a persons representation.

Demonstration: A character named Ellie only likes to drink coke, the someon eputs milk on her coke without her noticing and children are asked how sould she feel when sees the can of coke.

4 shell be sad
5 shell be happy

Question 13

Understanding of surprise and deception

Answer 13

This can only be achieved when the understanding of false belief is achieved

It requires an understanding that representation and own beliefs about the world are about to be disconfirmed

They will also become aware of deceptive behavior
3 not understanding of deception at all
4 no idea how to deceive but perform. improved after a coupl of trials
5 pros

Question 14

First and second order beliefs:

Answer 14

First: One that involves about having a belief about someone having a belief( i think that she thinks that)7

Second: one that involves that someone can have beliefs about a third person ( I think that she thinks that he thinks that)

Question 15

Theories about development of understanding the mind

Answer 15

These three suggested that a childs understanding of the mind is biased on development of their representational abilities: Welman, Perner and Leslie.

Welman: mind develops in three phases:
years 2 3 and 4
Perner: Metarepresentation
Leslie: 18 months of age children start to demonstrate pretend play and assumed that for children to pretend play they have to undesrtand what is in the mind of the children they re playing with.(metarepresentation)

Harris:Children understand others minds without neccessarily understanding that others have mental representations too.( simulation theory)

Question 16

Metarepresentation

Answer 16

The representation of a representation as in that of representing in your mind what someone else is representing

conscious -ness of your own mental representations

Question 17

Simulation theory(Harris)

Answer 17

Children know about own emotions and have an ability to pretend

They cant project emotions onto others as well as explanations for those emotions onto other people.

Adults do this all the time: we put oruselves because we had been in a similar situation an apply our own emotions to that person

Question 18

Three impairments described Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders.

Answer 18

1 Qualitative impairments in social interaction
2 Qualitative impairments in communication
3 Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities.

Question 19

Main features of Autism

Answer 19

Autistic alonenness- Children´s inability to relate to others

Desire for sameness- Childrens will to have a fixed routine

Question 20

Secondary features

Answer 20

Lack of spontaneous activities, repetitious behaviors, restricted interests, obsession in obscure activities and oversensitivity to some stimuli

Language difficulty- May have good vocabulary but make no sense or use correct language in inappropriate contexts and may show echolalia( repeating what another has just said).

Islets of ability- They have a poor performance in most areas but they may be as good if not better than other at specific tasks.

Question 21

Autistic Spectrum Disorder

Answer 21

Complete nalme of autism, called thus, because there are different degrees of autism, from mild to severe forms of the syndrome.
one side of the spectrum you have individuals with severe learning difficulties and at the other side of the spectrum you have individuals with average or higher than average levels of intelligence.

Question 22

False belief tasks and Autism

Answer 22

They tested four years old of both down syndromes and ASD´s and more than 80% of doz-wns syndrome succeded the anne sally task while only 20% of ASD´s did pass it

Showing that people with ASD have difficulties in tasks that require appreciation of another´s false belief.

Question 23

ASD´S and the three stories

Answer 23

There are three types of stories:
Mechanical: Action of story doesn´t involve people
Behavioral story: it does invlolve people but not what theyre thinking
Mentalistic story: requires understanding of beliefs about characters in pictures

Children with ASD could describe events in mechanical and behavioral stories but were poor at understanding mentalistic stories when given 4 stories and being told to arrange them;

Question 24

Deception and Autism

Answer 24

In deception studies ASD´s showed no problem manipulating behavior to deceive but failed to manipulate beliefs.

Question 25

False photograph task and autism

Answer 25

Task in which a picture is taken of a bear sitting on a chair with a polaroid camera. While the photo is waiting to be developedthe bear is moved to bed. The experimenter asks the child whether the bear will be shown on a chair or the bed.

ASD´s had no problems with performing in photograph tasks
Meaning that children with ASD have no trouble in understanding non mental representations such as pthographs and maps but do so understanding mental representations.

Question 26

Shared attention mechanism

Answer 26

Theory that tries to reject that deficit in understnding of mind is a core impairment in ASD.

Combines information about our own direction of gaze and anothers direction of gaze.

Longitudinal studies showed that lack of shared attention is one early deficit in ASD